天上不会掉馅饼. 2017
(Heaven Won't Throw You a Meat Pie)
umbrellas, embroidered QR codes, letterpress, sound recordings
Heaven she wrote, “will never throw you a meat pie”.
Gong Haiyan, the founder of one of China’s largest online dating services used the term to define the tenacity it takes to find a partner in China. With a gender balance ratio of 118 males to 100 females it seems counter-intuitive that the predominant demographic present at Shanghai’s largest marriage market is single, female, millennials.
This exhibition explores the motivations behind mothers’ participation in Shanghai’s Peoples Park marriage market. Held across the country in major cities each weekend, this public method of sourcing suitors draws hundreds of parents and grandparents each armed with advertisements of their child’s academic and professional successes. Umbrellas, simultaneously robust and ephemeral, become the backdrop of these snapshot biographies.
Developed during my five-month exchange in Shanghai, this body of work incorporates embroidery, sound works and poetry to recreate the ambience of the crowded marriage market while drawing attention to the subtle exchanges which occur if one can look beyond the spectacle. Heaven Won’t Throw You a Meat Pie explores the complicated nature of filial piety as an only child, in a society where children financially and physically support parents in old age. There is a mutual concern amongst parents and children alike, without a companion, old age may be marred by loneliness.